


Practical Sabotage

by qkind



Category: Among Us (Video Game)
Genre: CoWorkers to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Getting Together, The Skeld (Among Us)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:41:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28094067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qkind/pseuds/qkind
Summary: Knowing how to work the ship is great for engineering yourself some time alone with a friend.
Relationships: Blue/Red (Among Us), Crewmate/Impostor (Among Us)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 84
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Practical Sabotage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [unknownlifeform](https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknownlifeform/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, unknownlifeform! I had a lot fun playing with these characters and I hope you enjoy the result :D 
> 
> Thanks to derwent and Odalyn for making this better.

Red had been looking forward to being in a space mission since she was a child. Her teachers asked her plenty of times if she really wanted to study so much maths and physics for the very slim chance that she would get to put on a space suit. Her parents tried to guilt her, asking if she really wouldn’t get lonely in deep, dark space without any of her friends or family nearby.

She always dismissed all of their objections. She knew what she wanted, she worked hard for it, and here she was.

Only it wasn’t as perfect a job as she’d envisioned.

It was her first day and the training had not prepared her at all for the actual day-to-day tasks she’d have to perform. Her head was full of equations and theoretical solutions to theoretical scenarios, but faced with figuring out how to turn on a reactor without an instruction manual she was completely stumped.

The last button she pressed flashed bright red, letting her know she’d failed to input the correct sequence yet again. She took off her helmet and took a few deep breaths, trying to hold back tears of frustration. 

Once she felt a bit calmer, she started the reactor turn on process again. Holding her helmet in her right hand, she went to press the button on the upper left corner of the control pad, which had flashed with the indicator blue light. But instead she accidentally pressed the button on the lower right corner with her helmet, and this time she couldn’t hold back the tears.

“What have we got here?” asked a voice coming from behind her right shoulder.

Red turned around in a flash and was dismayed to find Blue, one of her new crewmates, witnessing her breakdown. She was sure her eyes looked red and puffy, and she felt the wetness of her tears on her burning cheeks. In other words, it was embarrassingly obvious that she was crying.

But there was nothing she could do about that now.

“Please, please don’t tell anyone about this!” she cried, trying to be quiet and not draw attention in case someone else was close enough to the Reactor to hear. “I’ll get this done, I just need a minute.”

Blue took a couple of steps back, giving her more breathing space.

“Tell anyone about what?” she said. “I’m just over here minding my own business,” and proceeded to fiddle with a panel on the wall near the doors of the room. Red rubbed her eyes and stared at Blue, and thought that whatever she was doing didn’t seem to be following any procedure she’d read anywhere.

“What? Don’t you have something to do?” Blue asked her when she noticed her looking. 

Red quickly turned toward the dreaded control pad again, embarrassed to have been caught. “Sorry!”

She was at the second round of entering the correct pattern, when she heard a pneumatic sound. She turned towards Blue and saw that they were now locked inside the room.

“Would you look at that?” said Blue, who was also looking at the doors. She looked at Red and walked towards her. “You can take your time now, since we might be here a while.”

Red feared she would fail at it again with the pressure of Blue looking on. In her distraction she had missed the sequence that the light display had shown her, and she felt her hands start to shake. She put her helmet down on the floor, since she was still stupidly holding onto it, to win some time. But that obviously just delayed the inevitable by a few seconds. She stood up again, and glared at the control pad, willing it to give her some clue as to which buttons she should be pressing.

“Let me see which sequence it’s asking for today. I’m trying to figure out if it follows any logic,” said Blue, who took the display off Red’s hands and fitted it back into its place on the table. When she brought it back out again, Red saw the display repeat the sequence that she had missed when she wasn’t paying attention. “Hm. Centre left, centre down, centre right. You got that?”

“Centre left, centre down, centre right. Yes,” said Red. And pressed the correct buttons with relief.

“One could expect the next button to be centre up, but that would be too easy,” continued Blue. The light display proved her right when the upper right corner flashed blue.

“Centre left, centre down, centre right, upper right corner,” repeated Red to herself, finding that saying the sequence out loud helped her focus. She got through the fourth round for the first time since she’d started, and watched the final fifth round on the screen. “Centre left, centre down, centre right, upper right corner, centre. Yes!” she cried out when she heard the reactor starting up.

Red turned towards Blue, who was still fully suited up. She looked at Blue’s visor wishing she could see her face. “Thank you so much!”

“What for? I didn’t do anything,” said Blue. “Look, the doors are open again.”

Red looked and, indeed, the doors were open. She looked at Blue, but she had turned away from her and was fiddling with the manifold lock. She didn’t seem to be paying any attention to her anymore.

“Well,” said Red, “I guess I’ll see you around.”

She stood there for a moment longer but seeing as she didn’t think she would get a response, absorbed in her work as Blue was, Red left.

She wasn’t wrong though. She did see Blue around. In fact, Red got used to working side by side with her, or more accurately, working while Blue flitted about whichever room she was in doing who knows what. 

Red found herself enjoying these moments together. She felt comfortable around Blue. She had the space to learn on the job and support in case she needed it. She also had someone whom she could complain to about other crewmates when she needed to vent, and someone with whom she could gush about how cool it was to be in actual, real space.

When she stopped to think about it, she thought Blue must know tons about her already, with everything she’d been offloading on her. In return, though, Red didn’t know much about Blue.

But that was ok, she reasoned. Maybe Blue was a little bit shy, but Red would win her over. They still had a long time to go before the ship was scheduled to return to Earth.

One day, Red found herself at Electrical, diverging power to the Upper Engine. It was boiling hot. Red seriously doubted whoever designed space suits thought about the amount of machines involved in running a ship and the heat those machines released. She pulled up her visor to breathe in some air, although it was as hot and dry as inside her helmet.

She saw Black enter the room and fiddle with some lever on a panel. Black wasn’t her boss, but he definitely thought he was.

“Visor down!” he snapped, and Red rushed to comply, annoyed at herself for doing so. 

She told herself it wasn’t worth the fight, but she started to feel faint. She didn’t know how much more of this heat she could take. After what felt like ages to her, Black left and she saw him turn right towards the Lower Engine. She pulled her visor up again, for all the help that it was. She started to consider abandoning her post mid task and going to get some cold water.

Suddenly Blue was there.

“Hey, hey,” she said, getting right into Red’s personal space as was becoming the norm. “How are we doing on this fine day?”

“No, don’t-” 

Blue’s body heat was the last straw for Red’s metabolic system, and she felt her legs give out beneath her.

“Whoa!” 

Luckily Blue caught her before she could fall on her face. “Ok, let’s take you to the MedBay for some much needed rest.”

“No… Black, in engine…”

“Hm. Don’t you worry about that.” 

Blue lowered Red until she could prop her up against a wall, legs spread in front of her. She then checked that no one was coming in, and headed towards the corner of the room, where with a show of strength that Red did not expect and was not sure she hadn’t hallucinated, she lifted the ventilation cover right off the floor.

She went back to Red then, and with a care that she hadn’t shown the vent cover, she lifted her into her arms. 

“Hey Red,” she said softly, “You need to hold on to me, yes?”

An attempt at a verbal answer was made, not quite successfully. But Red did hold onto Blue’s shoulders and hips when Blue positioned her so.

And with a very colourful koala clinging to her, Blue carefully went down the ladder leading to the ventilation system’s tunnels.

“Wait,” cried Red, suddenly sounding more awake. “What?”

“We’re just taking a shortcut, don’t worry,” answered Blue. Red’s grip tightened, and Blue thought that would only make this easier for her. Right before their heads went below ground level, she let go of the ladder with one hand and fished the vent cover from the floor of Electrical, pulling it towards them until it covered the opening again.

After hitting the ground, it was only a couple of short corridors and a final right turn until they found themselves at the bottom of another ladder. By this point Red was completely awake again, and had already gone through a veritable rainbow of emotions. Starting with shock, she quickly moved to confusion, then fear, then amusement, then fear again, but this time of being caught by stickler for the rules crewmates. In the end, curiosity won and she had to restrain herself from bursting with questions, since she didn’t think it was the time to voice them. Blue pulled her up the ladder as if she weighed nothing, and pushed the new cover open with her head.

After a quick look around, Blue pulled them up and Red found herself in the MedBay. She was dropped off at a bed, and Blue started tugging at her helmet first, and the zip that ran down her back afterwards.

Red was left sitting on the bed in her long black underwear, brown shoulder length hair loose around her face. She looked at Blue, still fully suited up.  
“You could at least take your helmet off so I’m not so much at a disadvantage.”

Red made grabby hands towards Blue, but Blue took a step back.

“What disadvantage?” replied Blue. “I’m going to get you some juice and something sugary and I’ll be back, don’t move.”

Red tried, unsuccessfully, to curb her disappointment. This was one more thing Blue knew about her that she didn’t know about Blue. Red really didn’t mind. The whole idea of not knowing what your coworkers look like actually sort of freaked her out, so she’d happily take her suit off. But similarly she’d appreciate others taking their suits off as well. Especially the one person she felt the most comfortable with. It was strange to realise she’d never seen Blue’s eyes or face. She’d never even pulled her visor up in Red’s presence.

Blue came back a short time later, with two juice bags and some air sealed snacks, which she dropped on the bedside table. Red had been pleasantly surprised to learn that you could still eat brownies in space.

While she busied herself with one of the brownies, Blue went to the light controls of the room and lowered the light intensity. She turned back to Red, and sat on the bed beside hers, half in the shadows. She took off her helmet.

Red tried not to stare too obviously, but she thought she failed. She drank in Blue’s inky black hair, longer than hers, and marvelled at her perfectly unblemished skin. In the dimmed lights it looked blue. Her eyes were downcast, and she toyed with a juice bag for a bit before stabbing it with a straw.

Red wanted to say something so that Blue would look up, but she didn’t need to. Blue took a sip of her drink through her straw, lifted her face up into the light, and looked straight at Red.

Her eyes were all black.

Red’s heart sped up, adrenaline shooting up her spine. She couldn’t look away. She couldn’t move. She tried to make sense of what she was seeing, but there was no way around it. Where there should have been white, there were only pupils. The shiny, liquid black contrasted with the pale blue of Blue’s face, which Red realised now was not due to low lighting. When Blue finished her drink in the tense silence, a long, thin, reptile-like tongue peeked out of her mouth to catch a few stray drops of juice.

Had there been signs that Red had missed? She was still unsure of what she was seeing. More accurately, she was sure that she didn’t know what she was seeing. She was still frozen on the bed, not eating her snack. When Blue stood up, she twitched as her body fought her mind over whether she had to jump up too. Was she safe? She couldn’t answer that question either.

They hadn’t exchanged a single word since Blue took off her helmet, and so it continued while she put it on again. She picked up her empty juice bag and after hesitating for a second by the side of the bed, she left Red alone in the room.

Red successfully avoided Blue for three days.

It was easy. In fact, it was so easy that she was half convinced Blue was avoiding her in turn. But she needed time to make sense of some things in her head, so this worked well for her.

When she stopped thinking herself in circles, she came up with three points that were suspicious about Blue: she never seemed to be doing useful work; she apparently used the ventilation system to move around the ship outside of others’ sight; she didn’t look human.

The first two were excusable. For one, smart people tended to not have to work hard at all to achieve what someone like Red had to put time and effort into, and there was no doubt that Blue was smart. So it was perfectly reasonable that Red had never seen her doing some assigned tasks; she probably stayed on top of her work. Regarding the vent issue, maybe everyone used vents to get around the ship faster and hadn’t told Red about that. Or maybe it wasn’t common, but someone not afraid of rules and regulations could be conceived to use them. Again, someone like Blue.

She could swear by these explanations were anyone to ask. Plausible deniability, check.

The third one she couldn’t ignore. Anyone in her position would be expected to report an alien stowaway on the ship. The fact that she had been sitting on this information for three days wouldn’t do her any favours were someone to discover this secret. But that was the crux of the matter and where her thoughts started to loop around: there hadn’t been, that she knew, any interference in the ship, by an alien or by anyone. At least not malicious interference, she amended. 

And also, who was to know what an alien would look like? Not Red, so she couldn’t be expected to recognise one.

So far Blue had helped her understand parts of her job that the training hadn’t prepared her for, she took care of her when she had a fainting spell, she had been her friend, and most telling of all, when Red asked her to take off her helmet she had. Even though Red would see her. So Red couldn’t help but feel safe around her. She’d even kept her distance in the past days! As if she understood that Red needed some time. 

Red came to a resolution. She would find Blue and tell her that it was ok.

Which wasn’t as easy as she had hoped. 

Maybe Blue wasn’t giving her space, she thought, maybe she was hiding from her for her own reasons. Or worse, maybe she was no longer on the ship. Not that Red thought anyone, including aliens, could survive in deep space, but who knew what resources she had and if those included some sort of escape pod.

She’d already been to every room in the ship twice and was starting to feel desperate. She made sure no one else was near Navigation and looked down one of the vents. Black nothingness. She stood up, turned around and jumped half a metre into the air when she saw Blue standing right behind her.

“Blue!”

“Red!”

“I’ve been looking for you!”

“In the vents?”

“No!” Red blushed under her suit at being caught. “Well… it was a last resort thing!”

Blue put her hands up as if to say that she wasn’t accusing Red of anything. She moved to the high chair facing the control panel and sat down with a sigh.

“Ok, let’s do this. You’ve been avoiding me,” she said, playing with the touch screen used for plotting the ship’s course. 

Red moved closer to Blue, leaning against the deck. She crossed her arms and quietly answered. “You have, too.”

Blue tilted her head to the side, agreeing.

“But yes,” continued Red after a moment, “I needed some time to think some things through.”

Red took her helmet off and propped it on the deck. She pressed the palms of her hands on her eyes until she saw white flashes behind her eyelids, then turned to face Blue directly.

“I don’t care that you never do any work!”

“Wow,” said Blue, “Don’t keep anything in.”

“And, and. I don’t care that you break workplace rules, like crawling all over the ventilation system! Or walking, whatever. And I don’t care that things seem to mysteriously break around you when it’s convenient, and I don’t care that I’ve seen you play with terminal windows in screens that are not supposed to have terminal windows open, and I really don’t care that no other crewmate seems to ever find you anywhere!”

Red hugged herself after her outburst, making herself smaller.

Blue looked at her quietly a moment longer, and then took her helmet off. In the brightness of Navigation the light blue sheen of her skin was more obvious than it had been in the Medbay, and her eyes looked huge. Red allowed herself to look, this time without unexpected surprises.

“Anything else?” asked Blue, with a reluctance that Red wanted gone.

“One more thing only.” Red paused and tried to come up with the right words, unsuccessfully.

“Do you not care that the Big Bad Wolf has such big eyes, the better to see you with?” suggested Blue.

“What?”

“I think that’d fit pretty well,” Blue paused before saying the name, “ _Red._ ”

“How do you even know - nevermind,” Red shook her head to focus once again and finally spit out, “What I need to say is. That I don’t care if your skin is blue, and scaly, and slimy, and - and alien -”

“It’s not slimy!” complained Blue, but where before she was frowning, now a small smile was on her face. 

She reached for Red’s hand and carefully removed her glove, then brought it up to her face, slowly. Red kept her breathing shallow so as to not make any noise, and touched the very tips of her fingers to Blue’s cheekbone. It felt so soft, and so smooth. With a bit more courage, she started tracing the contour of her face, down to her neck, then following her jaw and up to her lower lip. She felt a warm puff of air on her fingers and quickly broke contact. She couldn’t believe she’d ignored boundaries like that, absorbed as she was.

“Yeah, um,” Red’s voice broke, and she swallowed once. “It’s soft. So soft. Not slimy. The opposite of slimy actually-”

“You two!”

Red jumped and turned towards the door, where the shout came from. A black suit stood blocking their way out.

“Slackers! Back to work!” shouted Black.

Red’s heart was racing, hoping against hope that Black hadn’t had a good look at them before starting his abuse. She looked at Blue and found that the deck chair was once again facing the controls, away from the door, and that she had her helmet back on. Black wasn’t leaving, and when she looked at him he pointed to the way to Shields. Red mumbled something and with one last longing look at Blue headed towards Black. 

She was already in the hallway, Black walking ahead muttering something, when she heard Blue calling her name. She turned around and saw her standing by Navigation’s door.

“What tasks do you have to do?” Blue asked.

Red lifted her left arm, and looked at the screen on her cuff checklist.

“Hm, my checklist is empty. Would you believe that? Oh wait,” she tried powering off and on the checklist again. “I think this is broken. Is your checklist empty?”

“It seems so,” answered Blue.

Suddenly, they heard some indistinct shouting coming from further south on the ship. It wasn’t hard to guess who it was.

“Uh oh, I think comms are borked. Black will be entertained for a while. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know how to fix it, based on previous experience.”

Red stopped trying to work her checklist and looked at Blue again. She couldn’t see her expression so she wasn’t sure, but that was a suspiciously innocent tone that she used - too innocent not to be guilty. She thought about the last time communications had failed on the ship, and how Black monopolised the station turning and turning the dials around without letting anyone else help with the fix, and decided that she wouldn’t go and watch this time. She had better things to do anyway, like finding a more secluded space to hang out with Blue without risking being caught like that again.

She walked up to Blue, took her by the arm and turned her around to go in the opposite direction to Communication. There were better places for them to be at right then.

It was another day according to their alarm clocks - no sun to helpfully rise in the morning and lower at night in space. Red and Blue were killing some time in the Cafeteria.

“What do you miss the most from home?” asked Red. “Er, wherever home is”. 

Blue smiled at her and thought about the question for a bit.

“Fresh air. Open skies. Running.” She hummed. “Yes, running.”

Red thought about how she had hated jogging in the mornings, which she’d been doing as part of her physical training for years. And how she missed it now that she couldn't do it anymore. Of course they continued working out on the ship, but a gym was really not comparable to the freedom of running through a forest.

“I miss that too,” she said after a beat of silence. “I bet I’m faster than you. Too bad we can’t test that.”

“What?!” Blue exclaimed in mock indignation. “You’re not faster than me, and I will race you to Shields and back to prove it to you, right now.”

“Right now, we still aren’t allowed to run on the ship,” said Red, bumping shoulders with Blue.

“Sure we can. Close your eyes just a moment, for deniability.”

Red raised her eyebrows in disbelief. “You can’t say _for deniability_ , I lose all deniability then!” Still, she closed her eyes and put her hands over her visor to make her gesture externally visible.

Barely half a minute later a loud alarm startled Red, even though she was expecting it. She uncovered her eyes and saw that the room they were now in was intermittently flashing red. Arrows had appeared on the floor, a set of them pointing towards Administration and another set leading to Weapons. She turned on the bench she was seating on and found that Blue wasn’t there anymore. 

“Wait! That’s cheating, my eyes were closed!” she shouted, chasing after Blue. Blue laughed and didn’t turn to look at Red, sprinting towards Weapons. 

Even with the initial disadvantage, Red started gaining ground on Blue. Part of it was that Blue had to break when she almost collided with Orange, who had gone to O2 to fix the air renewal system before they all ran out of oxygen. 

Past O2 came three sharp turns in quick succession. In every corner that she turned into, Red only saw the back of Blue’s suit for a second before it disappeared again. Then they met the long hallway connecting to Shields, and with Blue in sight Red was pleased to see that she wasn’t so far in front of her. She pushed herself even more and reached forward, grabbing the bunched up fabric of the back of Blue’s suit and yanking her backwards.

It was her turn to laugh, but she didn’t stop to bask in her glory. She focused on winning now that she’d overtaken Blue.

When Red ran across Storage and towards the Engines she had to avoid crashing into Yellow, who was running out of Electrical. That made her notice the arrows on the floor again, which had been pointing in the opposite direction she was running in for a while. Somehow that observation made her laugh even more, which she blamed on the adrenaline. 

When she ran past Security the alarm noises stopped. Evidently other crewmates had been busy actually caring for their lives. She appreciated the time they'd given her and Blue to be silly in the meantime. 

Red was starting to flag, but she didn't hear any footsteps behind her so she assumed Blue had been even more out of shape than she was. 

The Cafeteria was finally in sight. She was running past the door to the MedBay, victory at her fingertips, when a body collided against hers and pinned her to the wall.

“Hey!” Red struggled against her surprise attacker until she realised - it was Blue. She looked over Blue’s shoulder and saw the empty MedBay… and the open cover vent. “You cheating cheater!”

Blue wouldn’t stop laughing. 

Red got loose. She entered the room, Blue following behind her. “You… are a devious h- _alien_ being.”

Blue collapsed into one of the beds, still giggling intermittently. Red walked back to her and, after hesitating for a second, lay on the same bed.

She took her helmet and gloves off. Blue, laughter not completely under control yet, did the same. Then Red realised they were pressed up right against each other, shoulder to hip, the back of her right hand brushing the back of Blue’s left.

She turned her head and saw Blue had her eyes closed. She looked content. 

Red closed her eyes as well. There they lay, in silence, enjoying simply sharing space. Blue interlaced her fingers with Red's. 

Red smiled.

“We didn't even make it back to the Cafeteria,” whispered Blue.

They both cracked up, the absurdity of the past hour finally registering. And just like that they stayed, holding hands and coming down from their high, relaxing after some much needed release.

In direct contrast to the time she’d been looking for Blue, when the whole crew seemed to have disappeared from the ship and she wandered from room to room always alone, now everywhere Red turned there was someone watching her every move. She couldn’t slack off for a second. Blue seemed to have the same luck, and Red even saw her do some work - or at least pretend to.

It was getting frustrating. Maybe Red had been building this up in her head, but every interaction they’d had felt like it was leading up to something. The last time they’d been alone had been the day in the MedBay, and although she was a bit embarrassed thinking about it all, she thought they missed the chance to finally break through somehow. So she wanted more moments like that. Lots and lots of moments like that.

Which led to her current scheming. She fought the anxiety that all the what if’s were giving her - what if she got caught and punished, what if she got caught and fired, what if she got caught and _ejected off the ship_ \- and committed herself to be reckless for once in her life.

Reckless didn’t mean impulsive though. She waited until the time was right. She was in Storage fixing cables, White in sight at the entrance to Admin. She saw Blue come in from the west side and approach the fuel containers. She knew that she would take a while to fill one up and then she’d take the long way to refuel the Upper Engine, which, coincidentally, also had some cables to be fixed. She counted in her head how long each task would take, and stretched out her repair so that they would match Blue’s pace. When Blue had left Storage the same way she came in, container in hand, she closed the lid on the cables’ socket with a click and calmly left the room. Red waved to White, who was still in Admin and lifted her head when she saw Red walk by. In the Cafeteria, Orange and Yellow were standing together by the garbage collector. Red nodded at them when they too turned to watch her. From the MedBay came the telltale green glow that meant someone was scanning themselves for vitals tracking. Red didn’t bother to look in and finally reached her destination.

As she should’ve expected, someone was already in the room. Black stopped aligning the engines for a second to stare disapprovingly at Red. Red knew that, realistically, she couldn’t tell a disapproving stare from a neutral glance without the tells that you get from facial expressions. Still, she couldn’t help how judgemental it felt when a fully black silhouette reminiscent of a giant crow stood there in silence, beak pointed in your direction.

She told herself it would be fine, and headed to the opposite side of the engine to get on with her task. She dragged it out as much as she could until she heard someone else walk into the room. A quick peek showed her it was Blue. Her plan was still on.

She took a small pair of scissors from her pocket. Then, instead of connecting a pink cable that had come loose at one end, she rummaged inside the gap between the inner and outer walls and pulled up a completely different bunch of cables and searched for the yellow with little drawings of lightning bolts. She snipped it off and the room went dark. A quick look at both hallways told her she’d in fact turned off the lights on the whole ship.

“Damn it all to hell! _Again?_ ”

Red’s inner voice was startled out of her victory song.

“Get out of my way!” continued Black, presumably pushing Blue aside.

“Blue?” asked Red, when the grumbling sounded faint enough that she was sure Black had left the room.

“It wasn’t me this time!”

To Red’s surprise Blue was already next to her. “How did you get here so fast? I can’t see my feet, much less the way across the room!”

“I have night vision,” said Blue, “But seriously, it wasn’t me. This is a fortunate but completely random event.”

“Sure it is.” Red reached towards the place she imagined Blue to be, and groped around until she found her arm. Then followed that arm down until she was holding Blue’s hand and, turning her open palm upwards, placed a single bit of cable in it.

“You… _oh_.”

“I have learned from the best,” Red said, stifling her laughter.

“ _But why?_ ”

“Because we were never alone anymore. And because I missed you.” 

Red admired her own daring. The darkness surrounding them had probably helped, she thought. Just when she was starting to feel awkward, Blue broke the silence.

“I missed you too.”

Red smiled so hard she’d be embarrassed if she weren’t still suited up. She took a few moments to internally scream until she was calm enough.

“I am yet again at a disadvantage, don’t you think?” asked Red. “You can see me and I have around a quarter of my usual visual radius.”

“Does that mean that you want me to get closer?” asked Blue.

Red bit her lip and steeled herself to be daring for a little bit longer. She took her helmet off and dropped it on the floor with a thud. Then she reached in Blue’s general direction to let her know she wanted to get her helmet off as well. Another thud.

“You would have to get pretty close,” she said quietly. And then Blue was close enough to enter her field of vision. Keeping still, she whispered, “A little closer.”

“This close?” said Blue just as softly, so close now that their noses were almost brushing.

“Almost.” And Red pushed forward and pressed her lips against Blue’s.

They were as soft as she’d hoped. She pulled away after a long moment and felt Blue’s shaky breath on her skin. Then she kissed her again, and again, revelling in the sweetness, in the smell. Those small touches were already making her whole body tingle and she feared she would eventually melt. At one point Blue seemed to be done with such light contact and brought her gloved hands to both sides of Red’s face, keeping her still and finally kissing her deep. Red’s mind went completely blank except for approximately three billion exclamation marks. 

Contradicting Red’s inner thoughts, the lights on the ship came on at that precise moment, blinding her and causing a startled Blue to lean away from her. While she was blinking white spots out of her eyes, Blue checked the doors, quickly took her by the hand and dragged her to the corner of the room. There, she took the vent cover off and sneaked in, pausing with only her head out of the tunnel.

“Let’s hide in here before anyone comes back?” she asked.

Red smiled, and followed her down.


End file.
